Over the Skeleton Coast to the Sossusvlei

May 11 and
12



Before
sunrise: a great drive in the desert, under a magnificent starry sky. Venus was
so shining that we could almost see shadows casted by her. Wheels up at
sunrise, for one of the most exciting flight of this air safari: the flying
over the skeleton coast. It is so called not because of ships wrecks, but
because of whales’ skeletons brought ashore by the strong, freezing, current,
coming from Antarctica. We flew over Terrace Bay, but the coast fog was already
inland. We flew underneath it near Cape Cross, seeing the dunes and the
Atlantic Ocean. Elephants trails got us very excited, but we could not see any
elephant. The altimeter was indicating -50 ft, with our wheels just a foot over
the white creamy end of the waves, on the beaches…
Colonies of
seals made us go a little bit higher, once in a while. 3 hours of this
incredible flying went by very quickly and took us to Swakopmund, were we stopped
for a quick refuel. We were wheels up again, over Walvis Bay and then over the
flamingos of Sandwich Bay. We flew more South than we needed, just to admire
the amazing desert of Sossusvlei. We left the Altantic and went inland toward
the red dunes and flew right over them, landing in the desert airstrip of
Geluk. 
The cozy and trendy Little Kulala was our home for 2 nights. 
We had some
unforgettable sundowners and the next morning we climbed the highest dune of
the red desert, Big Daddy. Being in the older desert of the World is quite
impressive.
From one desert to another: we are about to leave the Sossusvlei for the Makgadikgadi pan of the Kalahari, stay tuned!